Some thoughts on Google+

Like every other early adopter, I’ve been check­ing out Google+ and I’ve been sur­prised by what’s been miss­ing from the com­men­tary. So here are some thoughts, in no par­tic­u­larly orga­nized order, based on my ini­tial experience.

Google vs. Twitter

With 750 mil­lion users, most of Facebook’s time is sup­pos­edly spent on pic­tures and games. In its ini­tial iter­a­tion, Google+ does not seem to sup­port those core com­po­nents of the plat­form, which may make one won­der if Face­book really is the target. What it does sup­port today, how­ever, is a bet­ter ver­sion of Twit­ter, com­plete with spe­cific sta­tus updates. So, in its cur­rent iter­a­tion, I would ven­ture that the tar­get for Google+ is Twitter.

Which may lead one to won­der why Google is so aggres­sively going after Twit­ter. I believe it is doing so because Twit­ter search may be start­ing to steal traf­fic, and poten­tially rev­enue from Google search. In a some­what unsur­pris­ing move, Google decided to not renew its rev­enue agree­ment to get access to the Twit­ter stream. I would ven­ture that this is an attempt to kneecap Twit­ter and ensure it doesn’t become a seri­ous threat when it comes to adver­tis­ing revenue.

While the com­pany is gen­er­ally con­sid­ered as one that tries to do no evil, Google is also keenly aware that its suc­cess relies largely on two near monop­o­lies: search and online adver­tis­ing. With Twit­ter emerg­ing as the first seri­ous com­peti­tor in the space in a long time, rumored to be rack­ing in $60–70 mil­lion a year in adver­tis­ing rev­enue that could eas­ily be tar­geted based on tweets, Google is see­ing red and act­ing accord­ingly against the threat.

Google vs. Facebook

Mean­while, there is the fight against Face­book. Face­book presents a dif­fer­ent prob­lem for Google in that it has taken an increas­ing share of online users time and put it in their walled gar­den, away from the web that Google mines for rev­enue. This trend is largely built on the back of games and pho­tos so Google+ will try to tackle those things next.

While it is clear that, within the code, are hooks that will allow for games to be hosted on the plat­form, it is unclear whether that strat­egy can suc­ceed. The main chal­lenge they will encounter is that, as the own­ers of slide, Google is not just a provider of plat­form for online gam­ing but also a major player in the space. As such, some of the smaller play­ers may be wor­ried that the plat­form could sway in ways that me be less than ben­e­fi­cial to them. Zynga, because it needs to get rid of its cur­rent depen­dency on Face­book will prob­a­bly hedge by putting some of their games on the plat­form but it is unclear as to whether other com­pa­nies might join in.

On the pic­ture end of things, Google is lever­ag­ing its Picasa offer­ing, how­ever, it is clear that it could do more by inte­grat­ing it bet­ter in the + plat­form.  The mobile inte­gra­tion is a nice piece and may actu­ally do col­lat­eral dam­age to a num­ber of mobile photo host­ing appli­ca­tions link insta­gram, for example.

But the pic­ture offer­ing is not enough. A proper merg­ing of YouTube in the offer­ing might give it some extra power by lever­ag­ing their strong pres­ence in the video space to offer some­thing that doesn’t yet seem to exist on Facebook.

Google vs. Apple

Apple inte­grated the new ver­sion of iOS with Twit­ter, basi­cally match­ing one fea­ture that has existed on many Android phone for a few years. They have yet to inte­grate with Face­book but I would not be totally sur­prised if they were to do so in future ver­sions of their device. Android already sup­ports both Face­book and Twit­ter inte­gra­tion and is sup­port­ing Google+ through an added application.

In order for this inte­gra­tion to work, Google will have to inte­grate Google+ at a much deeper level than it does today. How­ever, with a social net­work and a mobile offer­ing, Google is in the inter­est­ing posi­tion of being able to become the social net­work for mobile devices. On the other hand, the approach they have taken to date leaves much to be desired. By installing two dif­fer­ent apps on the device, the expe­ri­ence feels tacked on rather than inte­grated. The Android team has to do some seri­ous work to really rethink things over and tightly inte­grate Google+ into the OS, mak­ing the expe­ri­ence seamless.

The acqui­si­tion game

With a rumored 4–5 mil­lion new users in the past cou­ple of weeks, Google is off to a good start with Google+ but still only reach­ing one per­cent of the Face­book world. Build­ing on the back of Gmail may be a solid strate­gic move at this time, as Gmail can get Google to roughly 200 mil­lion users. What what about the more than tripling of that num­ber required to get to par­ity with Face­book? For that, Google is going to have to do a lot of hard work and it’s unclear how they will go about acquir­ing more accounts going forward.

It may just be that Google will try to require every user of every ser­vice they pro­vide to cre­ate a Google pro­file account mov­ing for­ward. Today, Android users are required to cre­ate a gmail (or google apps) account to sync up their device. This rep­re­sents one acqui­si­tion chan­nel that none of the other play­ers in the social media space have and could be one big area for growth.

Another area for poten­tial growth is in the enter­prise space: look­ing at the Google hang­out fea­ture, it seems to me that cir­cles could become a use­ful way to orga­nize a com­pany and get quick online meet­ings. In fact, it may be more use­ful as a work­ing tool than as a merely social one.

Still, at this time, it is hard to see a case where Google could top­ple Face­book. But the his­tory of social net­works is rid­dled with the bod­ies of play­ers that were once at the top and even­tu­ally super­seded by new entrants (think Friend­ster and MySpace) so it is not totally impos­si­ble that Face­book could find itself in hot com­pet­i­tive waters.

What about rep­u­ta­tion rat­ing systems?

Last but not least is the ques­tion around rep­u­ta­tion rat­ing sys­tems like Klout or Peerindex. Those com­pa­nies have built their model on the back of Twit­ter and Face­book and must urgently adapt to include Google+. With many early adopters spend­ing more time on Gooogle’s prop­erty, the rep­u­ta­tion rat­ing game has a new entry point that will need to be urgently included in their cal­cu­la­tions if they want to con­tinue being rel­e­vant. When I first men­tioned this, many peo­ple replied that those ser­vices are just not good enough as is and it seems that they have yet another chal­lenge to deal with if they want to estab­lish them­selves as rel­e­vant in the future.